"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis

Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Trump Is Lucky People In Other Countries Can't Vote In U.S. Elections

>

Last week I was in the Museum of Political History of Russia in St Petersburg, digging all the Revolution of 1917 stuff and a room devoted to Grigori Rasputin. But when I walked by a giant picture of Putin which a crowd of people were gathered in front of I said "Oh, it's Trump!" And everyone cracked up. Putin is very popular in Russia but the toxicity of Trump seems to even be penetrating his aura. Russians-- at least in Moscow and St. Petersburg didn't share Putin's enthusiasm for the addled American narcissist.Monday, at the Center for New American Security, Joe Biden attacked Trump's bizarre foreign policy agenda by asserting he would spark a rise in anti-American feelings around the world and make the country less secure. "Wielding the politics of fear and intolerance, like proposals to ban Muslims from entering the United States or slandering entire religious communities as complicit in terrorism, calls into question America’s status as the greatest democracy in the history of the world," he said. "Adopting the tactics of our enemies-- using torture, threatening to kill innocent family members, indiscriminately bombing civilian populations-- not only violates our values, it’s deeply damaging to our security. If we build walls and disrespect our closest neighbors, we will quickly see all this progress disappear, replaced by a return of anti-Americanism and a corrosive rift throughout our hemisphere... Embracing Putin at a time of renewed Russian aggression could call into question America’s longstanding commitment to a Europe whole, free and at peace."Before St Petersburg, I was in Azerbaijan, where Trump is so unpopular that Trump Tower Baku closed down days after opening and is now talking about re-branding the whole hated project.Monday the Washington Post ran a piece called Here's what people around the world think of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. There were no surprises from correspondents in London, Tokyo, Jerusalem, Beijing, Mexico City, Cairo and New Delhi.

There’s no love lost between Britain and Trump. His golf resort in Scotland has been at the center of controversy for years. And a petition calling for Trump to be barred from entering Britain over hate speech has 586,935 signatures....There were some concerns among our Tokyo subjects about a Clinton dynasty. One man likened Hillary Clinton to an empress, but people were also wary of Trump’s rhetoric.One man felt it was time for Japan to free itself from what he called U.S. “dependency.”

In May a survey of 18,256 people over the age of 18 from France, Japan, Canada, the U.K., Germany Australia, Spain, Mexico, and Brazil to pick between Hillary, Trump, Cruz and Bernie. Hillary, who has tremendous name-ID overseas, won everywhere but Canada. Canada gets a lot of American media so they are more aware of the intricacies of American politics and of the election cycle and, obviously, they chose Bernie. Across all 9 countries, Hillary was the clear winner and "other" was more popular than Trump and Cruz combined. In fact, "other" was more popular than Trump and Cruz combined in every single country. Like Hillary, Trump has a lot of name-ID too, but his is overwhelmingly negative. Across the 19 countries, Clinton scored 46% to Trump's 10%. Trump did poorly everywhere, but, unsurprisingly, Mexico was his worst country, just 5%.

One of the things people overseas don't understand about America-- or understand all too well and feel the abhorrence-- is the whole gun-fetish thing. I've always found in my travels that-- outside of crackpot, totally dysfunctional places like war-torn Afghanistan and Mali-- foreigners feel there's something wrong with Americans because of the gun-nuttery tolerated on the country. Trump's not unaware of that and until he decided to run for president as a Republican, he had always publicly favored sane gun laws.Last week-- at least for a day or two, Trump decided to actually try to lead the Republican Party and said he backs the idea of banning those on the terrorist watch list from being about to purchase guns. But after he saw that not a single Republican in Congress went along with him-- none of his endorsers in the Senate, like Jeff Sessions (AL), Tom Cotton (AR), Chuck Grassley (IA), Marco Rubio (FL) or Richard Burr (NC) and none of the nuts and freaks in the House who back him, like Ron DeSantis (FL), Frank Guinta (NH), Darrell Issa (CA), Leonard Lance (NJ), Kevin McCarthy (CA), Paul Ryan (WI), Lamar Smith (TX), Greg Walden (OR)... no-clout-Trump then got barked at by the NRA and quickly switched positions again.He's now claiming that "obviously" he meant security guards should have had the guns, not drunken partiers in a nightclub. But the only thing that's obvious from the video of what he actually said is that he was lying when he tried walking back his comments to appease the NRA. Watch: